Tools I use (to get clients.)
I get asked all the time about what tools I use to get clients, do marketing and B2B growth. Questions such as:
"What platform should we use to find prospects?"
"What is the best SaaS for email newsletters?"
"What is the best tool for doing surveys and collecting testimonials?"
"What software would you recommend to automate my outreach?"
This article is the answer.
The tools, platforms, apps and services that I frequently use to reach my audience, generate leads, find prospects, schedule meetings, publish content, send emails, collect testimonials, and much more.
Note that most of these are referral links with some sort of sweet offer (first month free, monthly discount etc, I get credits, you get credits etc)... so make sure that you sign up through the link.
Last update: Aug 2024
Circleback
https://circleback.ai/?via=aron
There’s a gazillion different “AI meeting assistants" that can join your meetings, take notes and give you action items. This is my favorite so far. Bonus for supporting both Swedish and English (and a whole bunch of other languages too, of course.). You can choose to record meetings or just get a transcription (that you can prompt for insights, actions and summaries).
How I use Circleback:
- I use Circleback for both internal and external meetings in English and Swedish.
- I transcribe meetings to spot patterns (i.e. are there certain questions people ask more frequently than others, are there certain things that I say that create excitement or objections, etcetera).
- I take entire transcriptions (and sometimes audio recordings) and run through Gemini or GPT4 to extract further insights... sometimes from several meetings.
Beehiiv
https://www.beehiiv.com?via=Aron-Levin
After ten years of email marketing, building newsletters and email distribution lists I've finally found the best damn platform on the market. These guys just get it.
How I use Beehiiv:
- Collect emails (lead generation) and manage email lists.
- Publish short and long-form content on aron.beehiiv.com
- Build very simple email automation funnels (e.g. you download a PDF, and get a follow-up email the next day.).
Lemlist
https://get.lemlist.com/wui3twi6xyjd
I use Lemlist to do outreach with email and on LinkedIn. It's easy to set up (5 min) and can be customized to do lots of advanced stuff.
How I use Lemlist:
- Auto-connect with people on LinkedIn to grow my 1st degree network
- Send cold emails to targeted lists of prospects
- Track warm replies and follow-up to schedule meetings
- Warm-up domain names and email accounts to avoid landing in spam/promo tab.
Typeform
https://typeform.cello.so/C2aYMXJ3qrT
I’ve been a customer for 8+ years. It’s my go-to platform for lead generation, survey and marketing research. I’ve collected hundreds of thousands of leads on their platform... and it's the one product that I really can't live without.
How I use Typeform:
- Conduct marketing research and surveys (ranging from simple 1-click surveys to questionnaires that can take up to an hour to complete.).
- Collect testimonials and quotes from customers and clients.
- Collect leads for waitlists and product launches (recently replaced some of this with Beehiiv).
- Build conditional surveys to qualify and route leads to get access to products or to schedule meetings (e.g. you go to a page, answer questions, and the way you answer help dictate if you get access to book a meeting in my calendar).
Scrupp
https://app.scrupp.com/?ref=aron
Scrape prospects from LinkedIn, Apollo and Sales Navigator and export the results (for further analysis, enrichment or integration with other systems.)
How I use Scrupp:
- Export data from LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results.
- Build prospecting lists based on 2nd degree connections.
- I can then upload that data to platforms like Lemlist.
Apollo
https://get.apollo.io/bfy4m3oitwpu
Apollo is far from perfect, in particular in non-U.S. markets, but they do have a massive up-to-date database with great email quality.
How I use Apollo:
- Upload lists to enrich data (i.e. you know the LinkedIn URL but not the email address)
- Export email addresses.
- I also use Apollo inside Clay (see below)
Clay
Clay is crazy powerful and my "secret" weapon for building highly targeted lists and enrich data. Claygent (Their GPT-4 AI-powered prospecting research agent) is an absolute game-changer (note: it admittedly takes a bit of trial and error to set it up.).
How I use Clay:
- Build lists (tables) with both prospects (individuals) and accounts (companies) and enrich with whatever data you can imagine (add columns with their employee count, the technology they use on their website, estimated revenue, and forth.).
- Enrich data with external research using Claygent. This lets you use GPT-4 and Google to research data on any company or prospect.
- Example 1: Say you have a list of 1,000 companies and want to find their Instagram accounts and put that in a column next to their domain name. You can build a Claygent "agent" to do it for you and just have it run on autopilot.
- Example 2: You have a list of 1,000 startups and want to find who their lead investors are. Same story.
- Example 3: You have a list of 50 VC firms and want to find 20 companies that they have backed in the two years. Again... Claygent.
- Example 4: ... or maybe you have a list of founders and want to find them on LinkedIn without having to use... LinkedIn Sales Navigator or add each person manually.
Webflow
https://try.webflow.com/cowf2v5p91ah
Webflow is great for building professional and complex websites without knowing how to code. Most importantly they have an entire ecosystem built around their platform (i.e. makes it easy to find developers, plugins, themes etcetera).
How I use Webflow
- All websites I have launched over the last 5 years.
- I've also hired several Webflow developers to build projects.
- Bought and installed templates (with zero coding).
Skool
https://www.skool.com/refer?ref=a7dce84426e749e19635adff12198a5a
Skool is a community platform. It’s kind of like setting up a Facebook group but without any of the Facebook b.s. Their team has built an incredible product that is very user friendly. It’s easy to setup, run and community members love it, too.
They also support hosting courses, email broadcasts and paid memberships (e.g. if you want to build a paid only community and charge $xx per month) without any transaction costs or hidden fees.
How I use Skool
- Built an invite-only community for creators/freelancers.
- I haven't used any of their paid membership features.
Phantombuster
https://phantombuster.com?deal=aron82
Phantombuster lets you automate a whole bunch of stuff on LinkedIn and other platforms. Like auto-accept requests to connect, scrape data and collect public information from any LinkedIn profile, automatically follow people in your audience and more.
How I use Phantombuster:
- LinkedIn network growth: Auto-followed partners of select venture capital firms leading up to a fundraising event... which helped me expand beyond the limited number of people you can connect with directly.
- LinkedIn audience segmentation: Extract my 100 most recent posts from LinkedIn (Step 1) followed by extracting everyone that engaged with any of the posts (step 2) to build a highly targeted list of my most engaged connections (step 3).
ElevenLabs
https://elevenlabs.io/?from=aronlevin1449
Lots of great AI Audio tools. Their voice isolator product is crazy. It lets you upload an audio file and remove background noise mic feedback, and any other unwanted noise.
How I use ElevenLabs:
- Voice-over for advertising projects and commercials.
- Sat down to record crystal-clear studio-quality audio (for educational content) next to my three children while they're watching TV, playing games and ... even interrupt me. It's unbelievable good.
Mercury
https://mercury.com/r/aronlevin
Most banking products are just terrible. Especially business banking. In particular small-business / freelance banking. There’s an exception to this and it’s Mercury. They recently launched personal bank accounts too (which I’ll guess are just as good as their business banking experience).
How I use Mercury:
- It's a bank, so I use it for... well, "banking".
- I really dig that I can do everything (!) from the mobile app, including mailing physical checks, categorize business expenses and upload receipts.
- Mercury integrates with both Xero and Collective.
Collective
https://share.collective.com/AronLevin
I love Collective. If you’re thinking of setting up your own business in the U.S. (as a freelancer or consultant without employees) you NEED to use Collective. They'll help set up your company, bookkeeping, taxes, salary, distribution, accounting, annual and quarterly tax filings, and so forth.
How I use Collective:
- It's noteworthy that I I don't really use the platform (that's the whole point). I log in 2-3 times per month, and spend maybe 30min in total on the platform. 30min a month on business admin ain't bad.
- I pay myself a salary through their platform monthly, distribution, reimbursements (e.g. for business expenses), review and estimate my taxes and so on. I also use Collective to store all business documents.
- I really like that I can reach out to their team at any time to get help with everything from tax advice to technical questions about their platform.
Calendly
What I use to schedule meetings. You'll inevitably need some sort of calendar scheduling tool if your business is dependent on having meetings with new potential clients.
How I use Calendly:
- If you get good at either inbound or outbound sales, you'll end up with a scheduling nightmare. Try getting back to just a handful of people at the same time and suggest a time for when you can meet with them... and you'll see what I mean. It just... doesn't work. Try doing this with people across multiple time zones and it gets even worse.
- Distribute meetings across multiple team members: If you get really good at booking meetings or demos (which typically happens when you scale your sales team) you'll want to distribute the meetings across several team members. Calendly makes this really easy.
- Qualify or survey prospects before meetings: Calendly makes it really easy to add questions such as "What's your biggest challenge in your business right now?" or "Which of these three options best describe your situation...?"
- Reminders and follow-up: I send multiple reminders the day before, the same day, an hour before, etcetera to minimize the risk of a no-show.
Loom
Great for sharing quick video recordings with team members, potential clients, or investors.
How I use Loom
- Record presentations for my team or investors. In particular if something is urgent or they're in another timezone.
- Record 1:1 feedback or valuable content to users or potential prospects. Either personalized or with a personalized link to a generic video.